Totally agree, the defining characteristic of engineering is precision and reliability. LLMs can do amazing things but they are not absolute sources of precision and truth in the way we are used to computers being. They are a totally different way to interact with information.
Personally I love it, working with GPT to write software feels like working with an infinitely patient and wise mentor who can answer any question. I even find myself writing totally unnecessary politeness into my queries like: "Can you write me a function that does XX" instead of just "write a function that does"
I respectfully disagree, engineering is about making something useful first and foremost, with just enough precision and reliability to serve the intended purpose.
Have you... talked to engineers? It's not about "precision and reliability". It's about acknowledging margins of error in contexts of varying precision, and how to achieve reliability in the face of uncertainty implied by those margins.
A tool with wide margins for error is still a useful tool.
Personally I love it, working with GPT to write software feels like working with an infinitely patient and wise mentor who can answer any question. I even find myself writing totally unnecessary politeness into my queries like: "Can you write me a function that does XX" instead of just "write a function that does"